And Miles To Go
by Pandora Culpa
Summary: Every journey starts with a single step. To begin his, Ed must learn to walk again.


_**A/N**: This story sprang from Evil Whimsey's 2008 Haiku Challenge. __This was a particularly fiendish- and brilliant- exercise designed to stretch creativity. The way it worked, was that we each chose several haikus, which were randomly combined with thematic prompts. The combined result was used to write the ficlet.__ I ended up being stuck with several food-related haiku, which messed with my head something fierce. But... that's a good thing, I think. It forces one to work outside of their established comfort zone, and I ended up being pretty pleased with the results. Funny how that can work out._

_Anyway. That is how this story came about._

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Prompt: After the argument

_Wrapping dumplings in_

_bamboo leaves, with one finger_

_she tidies her hair_

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_Three hundred feet to go..._

Each step was a torment. His left leg practically blazed with sensation so intense it hardly seemed right to call it pain. With every pace, his nerves screamed against the new, raw feelings; every impact of foot to the packed ground sent acid coursing from heel to hip. His eyes watered from the effort to hold in any indication of the hurt he felt, and he focused instead upon the farmhouse at the end of the drive, and the distance remaining.

_Two hundred and seventy five feet to go…_

His right leg- the normal one- had begun to throb in sympathy with the left, as if it were somehow able to share the suffering of the new automail limb. The ache spread upward, his thigh tightening until he thought it would cramp, forcing him to walk in an awkward hobble like an old man. He simply bared his teeth, and struggled on.

_Two hundred and fifty feet…_

At two hundred and twelve, he misstepped. It was as though the metal limb ceased communicating with the upper portion of his leg; his knee buckled, and he collapsed hard onto the worn drive. He flung out his arms to catch himself, and couldn't contain the burbling cry of anguish that escaped his lips as his new right arm smacked the ground with a solid thump. For several minutes he could only thrash helplessly, as wave after wave of electric hell tore through his body like lightning strikes.

When the pain at last subsided he lay still in the dirt, eyes half-closed, breath coming in shuddering gasps. Every fiber of his body was shrieking, practically begging him to stop, just stop it, and lie there until someone came and carried him back inside, to his bed.

Not for the first time, he ignored the urge.

"_Dammit, Ed, you're pushing yourself too hard! You shouldn't even be out of bed right now!"_

"_I don't have the time to wait. There's too much I need to do."_

"_You're only going to end up hurting yourself. Your body can reject the automail if you don't allow it time to adjust. You're going to end up--"_

"_Missing an arm and a leg?" He laughed bitterly. "Sorry Winry, too late there." He set aside the crutch Granny had given him to move about the house when he refused to stay abed, and forced himself to stand without it. "Besides, I stopped coughing up blood a week ago. I need to get what's left of my body back in shape."_

_Her face was livid with fury at his intransigence. "Just don't expect me to come pick you up!" she shouted at his back, as he made his painful way out of the kitchen. "You go out that door and you'll have to bring yourself back in!"_

"_That's the idea," he growled, then grinned in dark amusement at the crash of a heavy wrench impacting the doorframe behind him. Easing his way down the front steps, he muttered, "Stupid… it's just a short walk."_

Only five hundred and twenty feet, both ways.

He rolled carefully to his knees, grimacing at the needlelike twinges that shot from knee and palm as he put pressure on the prosthetics. The tingling surged briefly, a devil's symphony playing across oversensitive nerves, and he had to remind himself to breathe as black spots danced in his vision. Swaying on hands and knees, he closed his eyes, feeling somewhat sick but determined to stand no matter what. There were still two hundred and eleven feet to go.

A warm breeze blew across the back of his neck, teasing wisps of hair from his ponytail and carrying with it a comforting, familiar aroma. It reminded him of times long past, when his mother was still alive, and alchemy was just a game to make her smile.

"No way," he grumbled to himself, a reluctant chuckle forming in the back of his throat. "She was way too pissed off when I left for that."

Winry's meat pastries- they were the first meal she'd learned to make, under Granny's watchful eyes. She used to bring them over to share with him, Al and their mother, back when Mom was sick and unable to do much cooking for her family. They were delicious hot, the savory filling nearly bubbling, and many burnt tongues had been suffered from trying to eat them before they'd fully cooled. Despite the sadness he felt looking back on that time, those were good memories; the four of them (five when Granny Pinako came along) sitting together at the kitchen table, laughing and trying to grab as many of the small, doughy pastries as they could to fill their plates.

Settling back on his heels, he ignored the flash of pain that came with the motion, and concentrated on forcing the automail leg to work with his natural one, pushing him up, straight-backed, until he was standing. Balance was difficult, but though he swayed and trembled, he held firm. Raising his right arm slowly to wipe away the beads of sweat forming at his hairline, he took a deep breath, then began the count again.

"Two hundred and eleven feet… two hundred and ten…. two hundred and nine…"

The ache returned at once, stinging and biting, but he concentrated on the smell of good food in the air, and resolutely kept putting one foot in front of the other. Pain spread from the automail leg, climbing his thigh and curling into a knot at the base of his spine, but he wouldn't be deterred. At one hundred and eighty four feet he fell once more, this time blacking out briefly from the excruciating explosions that wracked his nervous system. But once his head cleared he again crawled to his knees, tasting blood in his mouth as he forced himself upright, and was soon moving forward at the same slow, deliberate pace as before.

The sun had nearly sunk beneath the horizon by the time he finally made it back to the porch of the house. Ed's face was white as parchment, but as he looked up to where Winry sat on the top step watching him, he gave her a tight lipped smirk.

"I told you I'd make it on my own."

Her expression didn't change, but she nodded slowly. "Dinner's been done for a while now. Granny and I already ate, but we saved some for you."

He grasped the rail, forcing himself to use his automail hand to steady himself as he took the first step. "Too bad I didn't make it back in time to get it while it was hot. I'll do better tomorrow."

She reached out to offer him assistance up the stairs, then seemed to think better of it, standing back instead to allow him plenty of room. "I've got a fresh batch of pastries in the oven now," she told him quietly. "Just put them in when I saw you getting close."

He blinked, a little surprised. "Thanks. You didn't need to go through all that trouble."

The light was rapidly failing, and he couldn't quite make out the expression in her eyes. "Just get better, okay?" she told him quietly.

He hauled himself up the last step and stood next to her, shivering and aching, but on his own feet. "That's the idea," he repeated, and grinned as she stormed back into the house.


End file.
